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Ars reviews iOS 4: what’s new, notable, and what needs work

Apple's new iOS 4 offers some highly requested new features to iPhone and iPod …

Wireless syncing of Notes

Remember back when we couldn't sync Notes from our iPhones to our computers at all? Now, not only do notes sync into Mail on the Mac (which I still consider to be a strange place), but they can also sync wirelessly. The Notes app on iOS 4 now associates itself with different e-mail accounts, and it can sync to your desktop over-the-air via IMAP:

Avoid crossing that monthly data cap

Many AT&T users have either downgraded their data plans or signed up with new ones that either have a 2GB or 200MB monthly cap, and some carriers in other countries have similar data consumption limitations. Because you may not want to unnecessarily use up some of that valuable data, iOS 4 now has a setting (accessed via Settings > General > Network) so you can turn off cellular data altogether if you so choose:

iBooks on iPhone/iPod touch

Following the successful launch of Apple's own e-bookstore and app on the iPad, iBooks, Apple is now bringing e-books to the small screen. iPhone and iPod touch users will now be able to use essentially the same app—designed for the smaller screen of course—to read books purchased from the store, as well as PDFs. If you also have an iPad, you can sync your books between devices, as well as your bookmarks, notes, and last read pages.

I'm not personally fan of reading books on my iPhone, but people (including many of you, dear Ars readers) seem to like it well enough—why else would the Kindle iPhone app be so popular? It's certainly convenient if you want to catch up on a book while commuting or waiting in line at the post office, and then have your place synced back over to your reading device of choice later when you go home.

Search suggestions

Like Safari on the desktop, Mobile Safari now offers search suggestions when you begin typing something into the search box. It doesn't matter which search engine you're using; depending on what the query is, you'll get a list of options that seem most similar to what you're trying to find in order to speed up the process.

I find this to be a welcome addition to Mobile Safari and am glad that Apple decided to implement this on the iPhone and iPod touch after having seen it in action on the iPad. Things work a little differently on the iPhone of course—the suggestions pop down in their own menu on the iPad, while they populate the main browser window space on the iPhone. Different sized screens, different implementations.

Bing comes to iPhone

Speaking of search feature updates, Apple has added Bing to the list of search engines that you can use with Mobile Safari. You can access this setting by going into Settings > Safari > Search Engine to choose between Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. Then, when you perform a search within Safari, your search suggestions will come from that particular search engine, as well as (obviously) the results.

People who like Bing—I hear there are a few of them—will certainly like this update. Contrary to some of the recent rumors, however, Apple has not yet made Bing the default search engine on iOS.

Customize your Spotlight searches

Nothing is more annoying than searching your phone for an app and coming up with a ton of e-mails, or searching for a contact and coming up with a bunch of songs in iTunes. Do you ever use Spotlight to search for songs in iTunes? Neither do I. As it turns out, Apple had this feature in iPhone OS 3.x, but it was buried in another part of the settings (Settings > General > Home > Search results).

Under iOS 4, you can go to Settings > General > Spotlight Search to check or uncheck all manner of content, from Contacts to Applications to Audiobooks to Notes, and everything in between. You can also re-order the content so that certain results will appear first: just tap and drag the list-like icon on the right-hand side to move the item around. Do you always want your Mail searches to come in first? Put that at the top. (Insert Steve Jobs saying "boom" here.)

On top of this customizable Spotlight setting, Spotlight can now also search the Web or Wikipedia for keywords that you enter there. While Android users have enjoyed this functionality since at least Android 2.1, this is my first experience with it and I think it's pretty much the greatest thing ever—no longer do you have to launch Safari or a Wikipedia app to look something up unless you want to.

Jacqui Cheng
Jacqui is an Editor at Large at Ars Technica, where she has spent the last eight years writing about Apple culture, gadgets, social networking, privacy, and more. Emailjacqui@arstechnica.com//Twitter@eJacqui